New Video: Why backlinks Are So Important For A Dealer Website
I took a few minutes to promote this video regarding the importance of having backlinks to your dealer website is. Basically, you can have the best SEO Company on the planet optimize your site, but without backlinks you will not get quality traffic. It’s as simple as that:
Evidence Of The Power Of Backlinks To A Car Dealers Website
Goerge W. Bush Was Google Bombed?
If you ask any internet sales manager or director in the car business this one question, it is most likely they will say the same thing:
What is the single most important factor in optimizing a car dealer website?
Most will say keywords, Title Tags, etc… My answer has always been backlinks, and I finally have the evidence to prove it. But first, let me give you the most famous example that happened a while back.
During George W. Bush’s presidency a bunch of webmasters got together and linked to his biography website with the link text saying “miserable failure“. We call this a Google Bomb because what the link text says (anchor text) is one of the most important factors in optimizing any website.
What happened was simple. Anyone who searched Google for the term “miserable failure” was presented with the top 2 organic (free) listings pointing to the actual White House Website. The second listing went directly to George W’s biography page. So, was the official website of the White House optimized for the term “miserable failure”? Certainly not.
Google had to make some dramatic changes to it’s algorithm to keep this from happening in the future, and even Google’s Matt Cutts said the change was “completely algorithmic” and “we’re not going to claim it’s 100 percent perfect”.
After Google made this change a new tactic hit the world of SEO, and it was referred to as “Google Bowling“. To beat the competition, a rogue SEO company would bombard their competition with a massive amount of links from low quality websites pointing to a website. This would trigger a Google penalty that would kick them off their desired listings. This is why you never want to build too many links too fast.
Google did place a defensive mechanism in their algorithm to combat this. I know this because it happened to me. I put a shady alleged DMOZ editor in his place on a popular forum, and the next day he tried to Google Bowl me back when I was in the seafood industry. To my relief, it did not work. Thanks Google, good looking out!
Anyway, to prove how important backlinks are, I found a query I can use as an example. I was Googling the term “used cars in Orlando” this morning and I found a Ford dealer in Orlando Florida that came up on page 2 for this term.
Normally when you Google any term, you will see the keywords in bold in the website’s title tag and description. With Orlando Florida being one of the hottest used car areas in the United States, I was shocked to see that this was number 11:
This Google Search Didn't Even Have Any Keywords In It
If you notice, the words Orlando or Florida aren’t even mentioned in the display. If you Google that term, you will see websites with great keywords even on page 10.
This is an example of how powerful backlinks can be. There are many websites out there that will check your backlinks. I like Backlink Watch because it shows the bad links with the nofollow attribute.
You can click that term to learn more about nofollows, but basically any nofollow link will not pass relevancy to your website The same goes for javascript links (search engine bots don’t even try to read java scripts). If you plan on obtaining backlinks to your website, you should learn the difference.
A great website to check your current backlinks is Back Link Watch. You can also check your competition’s backlinks. Any backlink you find with the term “nofollow” next to it you should disregard.
For example, this particular dealer had many backlinks from yellowpages.com, but they are all nofollow. These backlinks won’t provide any SEO benefit to the dealers website.
There were some juicy backlinks from Netlook, an Orlando Used Car Listing Website, and some miscellaneous directories shown for this car dealer.
As an internet sales manager it is your job to acquire backlinks. There are thousands of directory websites out there that are free, and there are also some juicy paid directories like Business.com and the Yahoo Directory. Each of the two cost $300.00 a year, but you will get your moneys worth in Organic Traffic.
Keywords are still important, and I cannot believe that this dealer in Orlando doesn’t have any keywords in their title tag. I don’t blame them for being naive, so I would blame the vendor that built their website. The first thing they should have done was put the proper title tags on the homepage.
If you are an internet sales manager, I suggest you subscribe to this blog on the top right. We will provide you with a wealth of information on a weekly basis so you can personally take your dealership to the top!
If you have any suggestions for a topic, send an email to mike@showroomlogic.com.
SEO For Car Dealers – What Do These Companies Really Do?
Most internet sales managers are trained to add the proper keywords to each page on their websites. Many car dealers think that this is SEO. The fact is, that is only 1 small portion of SEO, and it’s the easy part.
Some larger car dealers want to dominate the market in their area, so they hire SEO Experts. A reputable SEO Company will charge at least $2,000.00 a month to get you better results.
When hired, the first thing they will do is look at your site. They will be horrified when they see you are probably using a dealer template site, but that’s not the end of the world unless you’re using old technology like Izmo Cars or BZ Results.We do not build websites, so we can honestly say that there are some “ok” ones out there, but nothing will perform better than a hand coded in house website.
So what do the car dealer seo companies really do?
They build backlinks for you. A backlink is a another website linking to yours, and the strongest backlinks come from relevant websites. This is how Google and other search engines rate your website, and decide who gets to go first when somebody searches for your keywords.
If you are aggressive, this is the best way to analyze your backlinks:
How Many Backlinks Do You Have?
The easiest way to check your backlinks is to go to Yahoo Site Explorer. The more backlinks you have from different domains, the better you will rank.
Which Backlinks Are Better?
The best backlinks come from related websites. If it’s a car blog or third party advertiser that’s all about cars and trucks then that is great. Other backlinks from non-related sites are ok, but they won’t help as much. Another great backlink is an link coming from a web page that has a Google Pagerank of 1 or better.
Which Backlinks Are No Good?
You have to take a moment to investigate each link. If any of the backlinks are using Java Script or posses the “nofollow” tag they are of no value to helping your website.
How Do I get Backlinks Myself?
A good start is to make comments on auto related blogs. These backlinks aren’t the strongest but they are the easiest to get. Be sure to read the blog post before you comment on it or your comment will not be approved. Webmasters hate it when people make lame comments on their blog just to get a backlink.
Another good way is to write and distribute press releases about events at your dealership. There are tens of thousands of reporters nationwide looking for a story every day, and they are constantly looking at press releases. Showroom Logic performs press releases for our clients, and so far we are batting 1,000. There is no guarantee that it will be picked up, but if your article has a couple of backlinks pointing to your website it could end up on 100’s of websites nationwide. It’s always good practice to check your backlinks about 2 or 3 weeks after you launch a press release.
Directory links are pretty weak, but if you’re sitting there doing nothing then go for it. Try to get a couple a day. In a years’ time you will have almost 1,000. I had a microsite for a dealer I worked for a couple of years ago. Although the site is abandoned it still outranks both of their dealer Cobalt sites in Google searches, and the only backlinks it has is from directories. When I left there, the guy that took over thought he knew everything, so he didn’t understand how powerful it is. Plus, he lacked the skills to update it. He even called me about 14 months later and asked me to take it down. He said “I’m getting too many phone calls about vehicle we no longer have in stock”. I simply told him to learn how to update it, because it’s not costing them anything. Why would you want to shut down something that makes your phone ring? Anyway, this was 14 months later and the passwords and such were at the dealership. I didn’t have the log-in information to shut it down, and it’s probably a good thing for them because it’s still live and their phone still rings. God only know where the email leads go to! I took that job at the request of the General Manager, plus I wanted to see what was out there for the car business. The owner had us on a zero budget, and I sill managed to get 500 leads a month without the help of AutoTrader or Cars.com. Furthermore, the dealership was located in Haines City Florida, practically in the middle of nowhere. This is ultimately why Patrick Bennett and I started Showroom Logic.
Another easy way is to ask for link exchanges. If you find quality blog and article website that talk about car related content send them an email and ask for a link exchange. Hopefully you have a dealer blog with a decent Google Pagerank, and this is where you can provide the website with their backlink. Then you simply have them provide a link from their website pointing to your dealer page. Beware, if your dealer blog lacks pagerank many webmaters will ignore your request. If you find a link exchange partner, be sure the link they are giving you is not a dofollow link or a Java Link. Most importantly, make sure their site isn’t linking to any bad neighborhoods like Gambling, Porn or Drug Sites.
Viral Campaigns are also a great way to obtain backlinks. If you find the right company that has connections this will juice up your website better than anything else. If you try to create your own viral campaign the odds are it will not work. Another thing to consider is where you put your viral campaign. It has to go somewhere, and this is where a dealer blog comes in. Here is a viral campaign we did for a car dealer in Tampa Florida. The idea is to get backlinks to this blog, then they will get one good backlink to their dealer website from a content related site. This is why Park Automall dominates their market in Tampa Florida.
This is why our clients are so successful. One big package costs less than $1,000.00, and it juices up their website like no others. Our system gives juicy backlinks to dealer websites, and helps them like no others. In a nutshell, our software incudes:
- A Dealer Blog (Formatted Correctly) with one blog post a week written by Showroom Logic.
- A Macro Site with dealers entire inventory. Each vehicle listing provides a backlink.
- Twitter Automation: Each vehicle is tweeted with a direct link to car or truck using bitl.ly. Our studies indicate that these Tweets provide relevance.
- Facebook Automation: Blast your inventory (with photos) to Facebook.
Don’t be tempted to buy links like LemonFree.com, this is against the Google Terms of service. Free organic traffic from Google is the best you can get, and if they penalize you in any way it could be fatal to your entire dealership.
We can only offer this package to one car dealer per city, so call Mike today at (863) 666-0130 or send an email to mike@showroomlogic.com. Our goal is to make your job easier and make you look like a hero at the same time.